


Red

by jackfish



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: 5 Times, Colors, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:10:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackfish/pseuds/jackfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eyes, skies, uniforms, and killings—instances of the colour red in the life of Kraglin Obfonteri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [Guardians of the Galaxy Kink Meme](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=729358#t729358) on [Livejournal](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com).

Kraglin's belly stopped grumbling two days ago. He's just sleepy now, his head feeling sore and heavy as he drowses in his aba's arms. His mama is sitting up by the door with a blaster. She says times like these, you've got to be more afraid of your neighbours than anything coming down the pipes. They've still got salt pills and protein bars that Aba cuts into little pieces for all the kits, and Taisy told him that the bad folks in the squat would slit his belly open to get a bite of food if they had the chance.

She's sleeping with the rest of his sibs and cousins in the back. No one's allowed in or out this time, not even to go scrounging. Mama and Aba boarded up the door and window, and Keef bolted a sheet of scrap metal over the toilet grate. The lights are off. Everyone's supposed to be quiet.

Aba is humming, just softly. Kraglin can tell xe's nervous. He's being held too tight and rocked in a way that jostles him awake now and again. He can smell Aba's sour sweat mingling with the stink rising up from the bucket in the corner, and it makes him scared.

It's worse than the last time. Last time, it was only the law coming down to bang on the doors and tear up folks' houses. They said folks weren't supposed to live down here, that it was dangerous, that everyone had to go live someplace else or get put in jail. Only there aren't any other places to live and they don't let you stay with your clan in jail. The time before that, it was some sort of bugs that got dumped down the pipes at the port. They were big mean ones that got into everything and took out meat when they bit. Kraglin still has the marks on his legs.

Aba wasn't afraid of those bugs, though—not even when Enderley lost a little finger. Xe bundled up all the kits so no skin was showing and stuck heavy things to the bottoms of their shoes. Mama made poles with nails on the end, and they all got good at spearing the critters, which turned out to be tasty when Aba pried them out of their exoskeletons and grilled them up.

Now, Kraglin can feel xyr shudder. Aba leans forward and carefully pries up a corner of the blanket that's tacked over the boarded-up window. Xe puts an eye to a little crack in the boards, and this time Kraglin lifts his head and looks too. At first he sees only black. The grid went down days and days ago. He hears Aba suck in a hard breath, and he squints. Then he sees them. Grey shapes in the dark, moving low to the ground. Red, glowing eyes.

His belly clenches like he needs to pee. 

"What are they?" he whispers.

Aba pulls him back and smooths the blanket down. Xe squeezes him. "Those are angels."

"Don't tell him that," Mama says, clicking her tongue.

"Would you rather he get scared?"

"Hush," Mama says.

"I ain't scared," Kraglin protests.

"Of course you ain't, baby." Aba kisses the top of his head and gets back to rocking him. "We've got angels looking out for us."

* * *

When Kraglin's half-grown and there's no one left to keep the clan together, his cousin Enderley pays to smuggle him up to the red light district to live with her. 

"You'll like it," she promises.

He's taller than her now, at least by an inch, but she drags him down the unfamiliar tunnels and over rickety causeways, holding him by the hand like he's still a kit. 

The district's not like how he pictured it. He's old enough to know all about whoring and gambling and illegal surgeries, even if he ends up gawking at all the strange folks around. But he thought, up until the moment he arrived, that it was called the red light district because you could see the sun from up there. Like maybe the sky was still really far away, squeezed out by the city, but some of the light got down to the street and made everything red.

He feels stupid now. It's only buildings on top of buildings like it is down in the pit, and there's nothing but darkness when he cranes his neck and looks all the way up. The red lights are just electrics, bolted to the sides of doorways and hanging lantern-style over the stalls. 

"Stop goggling," Enderley says, laughing. "You look like a pitter."

He is, and so was she until two years back, but he doesn't say so.

Enderley shows him where she lives with her girl and two of their friends. They're all older, and they make a fuss over him, messing up his hair and telling him he's cute. He gets the feeling they're laughing at him, but he doesn't really mind. Enderley has a lot of money, and she takes him out and buys him fry-bread and a new set of clothes. 

"It's on me," she says when he gets nervous over the price of shoes. 

He already owes her more money than he's ever had in his life for getting him up here.

The first few days, she lets him tag along with her. He plays lookout, his back to an alleyway and his face burning. She lets him eat until he's sick, spending units on whatever he wants and making him try fruit and spicy things with greens in them. Her arm is warm and soft around his shoulders as she shows him how to pick a mark out of the crowd. She makes him practice how he'll talk to them, and she puts on stupid voices as she imitates them, puffing out her cheeks or swaggering around like a real big deal, calling him Sweet Thing and Baby Doll and Big Fella.

It's funny until the first time he actually does it, and then it isn't any more.

"You get used to it," she says when he returns to her afterwards, and she buys him a cup of cold stimmy to get the taste out of his mouth.

He gets used to it.

It's about a year before he branches out into robbery. The first time it happens is pretty much by accident. He makes the mistake of going off with the wrong mark and it gets weird. Not just rough, but  _weird_. He fights like a wild beast, and everything goes fast, and suddenly there's the crack of a skull against the wall. His mark crumples down to the ground, limp and quiet.

There's a lot of blood.

Truth is, he's just too rattled to run at first. 

He kicks the heap. There's no sound except the thump of his boot against flesh. He kicks again and again and again.

After that, he crouches down and carefully picks up the injector this asshole tried to jab him with. You can always sell something in a vial, even if you don't know what it is. Since he's down there, he goes through every pocket he can find and ends up with two credit sticks and a tablet. He tears the buttons off the asshole's coat. They look like they might be worth something. Then he takes off like all hell's on his tail. 

"Don't bring any trouble back here," Enderley says when he shares out the proceeds that night. "I mean it, Kraglin. If the law comes looking for you, you're out."

He's careful. He doesn't try anything with his regulars, anyone local who could figure out where he lives. He doesn't mess with the uppers either, the rich folks who come slumming for rough trade. They're usually carrying a little blaster or else they're linked up to their bodyguards, and most of them are smart enough to only bring down a credit stick loaded with just as much as they're willing to pay to fuck something.

He keeps his sideline limited to off-worlders. They're easy to pick out of a crowd, and they don't know their way around. He sidles up to them with his usual line, and if they're so inclined to chase whatever unlawful business they're on with something dirty, he takes them someplace private and beats the crap out of them until they give him all their money. 

"Doesn't that hurt?" Enderley asks, brushing her fingertips over his bruised and swollen knuckles. 

His hands are messed up all the time now.

He shrugs, hardly really feeling it any more. "It's fine."

* * *

One day, Kraglin pulls a knife on some jackass in a red coat. 

It doesn't go the way he planned.

He ends up on his back in the alley with a boot on his throat and the tip of an arrow embedded in the meat just under his left eyeball. At first he thinks he's seeing stars from hitting his head, but then he realizes something's shorting out every time his eye twitches. 

He can't help it. He laughs. 

It isn't a happy laugh, but it's the first time he's laughed at anything in a long while.

In his right eye, he sees the Centaurian grin. Shiny teeth flash. Slowly, boot exerting just enough pressure to nearly crush Kraglin's windpipe, the Centaurian leans down and grabs hold of the arrow. He wiggles it, making Kraglin choke on a holler as his vision momentarily goes white. Then he yanks it out, which isn't any better.

Kraglin just about screams, but no one takes any notice. That's the whole point of this corner of the district.

"Am I gonna regret letting you up, boy?"

Kraglin shakes his head, the flare of pain dulling to an awful ache as blood streams down his cheek. He's lying. The second the boot's off his throat, he goes for his other knife and lunges. He's too slow, and his direction's off from his sight still blurring on the left. The Centaurian catches him and slams him face-first into the wall. 

"Not bad," the Centaurian says, and now he's the one laughing. He gets a hold of both of Kraglin's wrists and head-butts him, smashing Kraglin's face against the bricks. Kraglin's nose breaks with a nasty crunch. 

What follows is a brief but heated discussion on whether Kraglin is going to drop his knife—which is the Centaurian's position—or whether Kraglin is in fact going to cut the Centaurian's sorry pecker off—which is Kraglin's preference, defended with increasing volume as the Centaurian pushes against his back, pinning him tight to the wall with his shoulders and his hips. He's not going out like that. He doesn't let himself get done to any more, not like that. If he's going to be killed, he's not going out like that.

The Centaurian makes a disgusted noise and eases off him just a little. "What would I want with your scrawny ass?"

Eventually, because he's probably going to choke to death on his own blood anyhow, Kraglin drops the knife.

The Centaurian lets him go. Punches him in the side hard enough to knock him over. Kicks him in the pecker for good measure.

Kraglin ends up in a ball, whimpering and retching. 

"You got glands on you, I'll give you that," the Centaurian says. "But I would not recommend coming at me again."

Kraglin struggles onto his hands and knees. He blows the blood clear of his airway and wipes at the wound under his eye. The Centaurian's looking at him cannily, tucking both of Kraglin's knives into his belt. 

"Now, the way I see it, you were gonna cut my throat and take my money. Steal my nice shoes."

Kraglin doesn't say anything.

"Ain't your first time," the Centaurian continues. "You're a local boy. Got yourself a good fence."

Kraglin manages a one-shouldered shrug. 

"Nah." The Centaurian peers at him. "You're sly. Even lured me back here with those big blue eyes of yours. You got yourself two fences. Maybe three. Make 'em bid against each other. Make sure you get paid."

Kraglin goes still. He's not wrong.

The Centaurian smiles. "I might have some business opportunities coming up around these parts. So how about you introduce me to these friends of yours and maybe you and me forget this little misunderstanding ever happened."

That's how Kraglin formally makes the acquaintance of Yondu Udonta, Second Lieutenant of the Ravagers.

His face all fucked up and his stream coming out crooked when he pisses, he takes Udonta on a full tour of the red light district, hooking him up just like he wants. He shows him the tunnels too, the ones with entrances and exits you probably wouldn't spot if you didn't have them pointed out to you. When prompted, he tells him about the last time the law came through, and where the uppers go to get high when they're slumming, and how that drain pipe behind the Three Poke Surgery runs straight down from the port to the pit.

It's not because he's afraid of him, although he is. It's just that up until now, Kraglin never thought he knew much about anything.

"I ain't feeding you." 

That's pretty much the only thing Udonta could say to make him believe it's all right to follow him into a hotel room. He hasn't tried to touch Kraglin up since kicking the shit out of him, and that's just fine. Kraglin hunkers down on the floor while Udonta sits on the bed, chewing on some sort of jerky and asking questions about the delivery chutes as he scrolls through a set of holomaps of the city.

It isn't a bad room. Udonta's got money. He seems like a big shot—not like an upper, but the real deal. Someone dangerous. 

"What's it like?" Kraglin finally asks, cocking his head at the grid of maps. Udonta only looks at him funny, and he figures it's because he isn't talking right, thanks to his busted nose. He clarifies: "Upside. Is it like in the shows?"

That funny look holds, and then Udonta turns back to his screen. "It's a shithole. A cleaner shithole than this, mind you, but a shithole just the same."

Kraglin sits silent, thinking on that. The room briefly shakes and then settles when the cycle clicks over and cold air starts getting pumped down from the upper levels. Udonta works a while longer and then takes off his shoes. He takes off his coat and throws it at Kraglin.

"Don't bleed on it."

Kraglin's still staring blankly at the thing when Udonta turns off the lamp. It doesn't make much of a difference, with the street lights coming in through the bars on the window. 

"If you steal from me," Udonta says, lying down and crossing his arms, "I'll kill you."

It's said too simply to be an empty threat. Kraglin thinks about telling him he's got a place to sleep, but the truth is he hasn't been going home much ever since Enderley went missing. Two cups of hot stimmy usually get him through the night. Udonta's coat smells like machine oil and chew, and it's heavy and warm when he pulls it around his shoulders. He would feel better with his back to the wall, but he lies down on his belly, head turned to his good side so he can breathe a little easier and bleed on the floor if need be.

He sleeps like that the whole cycle, and he does it again the next day, and the day after that. In between, he takes Udonta all around the district, and goes ahead into places that don't let in off-worlders, and plays lookout when Udonta's screwing around with the security sensors. The third time he wakes up in the hotel room, Udonta's sneaking in. 

Kraglin sits up abruptly, startled. He never heard him leave. 

Udonta ignores him, shimmying halfway under the bed and unsticking a blaster from where it was apparently strapped under the frame. He unscrews the light fixture and retrieves a credit stick from inside. He snatches his coat off Kraglin, leaving him cold.

"What's going on?" Kraglin asks.

"Got what I came for," Udonta says. "Ain't fixing to stay in this dump any longer than I have to."

"Oh," Kraglin says. It comes out sounding stupid, and he blames it on still being half asleep. He feels like he's been kicked in the belly.

Udonta tucks the blaster into a holster on his back and puts his coat on overtop. He pats down his pockets, seeming satisfied that everything's where he left it. He heads back out the door, not even bothering to look over his shoulder as he calls: 

"Are you coming or ain't you?"

Kraglin stares at his retreating back for one long second and then scrambles to his feet and chases after him.

* * *

You don't kill clan. That was what Kraglin was brought up to believe. But a clan isn't a clan without someone to head it up, and so when Captain Frela finally meets a good and fitting end on a raid, Kraglin hardly waits for her body to go cold before stepping up behind the first lieutenant and shanking him between the livers.

Blood spurts all over his hand when he pulls the knife out. Vee gives a nasty croak and stumbles forward before hitting the ground. He'll probably live, provided the friend standing nearest cares more about getting him to the medic than gutting Kraglin in retaliation.

On the other side of the galley, surprise flickers across Yondu's face so fast you could miss it. Then he grins, baring half his teeth. "Well, now. Looks like that's one vote for me."

All hell breaks loose.

Yondu's supporters seize the main deck early and hold it, but it's a near thing. It takes four days of hard and dirty fighting to whittle five warring factions down to one agreeable crew. Four days of Kraglin crawling through the ducts with a blaster hole in his shoulder. Four days of dealing and bribing and blackmailing. Four days of blood splattered in the corridors and gumming up the consoles, drying red under Kraglin's fingernails and tasting rotten in his mouth.

By the fifth day, six Ravagers are dead and another two dozen are laid up. Three are in the brig waiting to be executed for being stupid enough to set off a bomb in the hold that blew through a hundred thousand units' worth of cargo and could have knocked a hole in the hull. Yondu officially takes over, and he and Kraglin somehow end up fucking in a supply closet.

It just sort of happens, like it was part of the plan. One moment Kraglin's clapping Yondu on the back, grinning, and the next his hand is on Yondu's neck, laid alongside it, leaving a rusty smudge on his skin. Then, the next they're both staggering into the closet and Kraglin wants to do something with him so bad he can hardly breathe.

Yondu keeps laughing at him, soft and hoarse. "Look who finally wants to suck my dick now I'm captain. That what you were holding out for, boy?"

Kraglin finds himself backed up against the shelves. The door clanks shut. Yondu's hands are just barely on top of his hips.

"You gonna cut me if I try and touch you?"

He shakes his head, his heart beating loudly as he grabs a hold of Yondu's shirt. There's a hungry feeling deep in his belly that he hasn't felt in ages, and he's getting hard so fast it makes him dizzy. "Uh-uh."

"Uh-uh?" Yondu leans in even closer, warm and heavy against him. He smells good, like sweat and liquor, and his breath is hot on Kraglin's ear. "You ain't gonna try to slide that big ol' knife of yours into my gut like you did to Vee?"

Kraglin snorts a laugh. He grinds hard against Yondu, closing his eyes at how good it feels. "No, sir."

"That's my boy," Yondu says, and then his mouth comes down hard on Kraglin's and neither of them has much else to say for a while.

* * *

The sky is pale green all through, with a touch of bright pink at the horizon as the sun slowly sinks towards evening. Or maybe it's rising. Kraglin is really fucking drunk and can't be counted on to make a proper reckoning of the situation.

He also can't presently lift his head to look for any other sign of the time. Not that he's overly inclined to. The floor is nice and cool, and it's holding steady, unlike the bending, waving skylight above him. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Yondu's foot, presumably with the rest of Yondu attached to it. He can hear him breathing, not quite snoring but maybe dozing.

Kraglin doesn't usually get shit-faced. He drinks his share, and he sometimes smokes a little green or takes a little stimmy when he needs it, but as First Mate it's on him if a party gets too wild, so he tries to keep his head. But he and Yondu aren't on the ship just now, and they're not expected back for another day or so. Depending on whether that's a sunset or a sunrise.

Every once in a while, when they're planetside or in port with more money than they know what to do with—whether in their own accounts or someone else's—Yondu gets it in his head to take him to the fanciest hotel he can find. It's pretty much all the same to Kraglin. They live just fine on the ship, with plenty to eat and drink, decent waterworks, and a bunk for every set of bones. 

Truth be told, he doesn't think Yondu cares that much about gleaming white rooms and hundred-storey views either. He's just got a taste for pissing off fancier folks. The more trouble some jumped-up little manager gives them when they try to check in, the noisier and nastier Yondu and Kraglin end up fucking on top of all that expensive and breakable furniture.

"Where's that bottle got to?" 

He blinks slowly as Yondu's voice drifts through the fog around his head.

It takes him a moment, but his blind groping turns up something promising. 

He rolls onto his side, maneuvers the mouth of the bottle between his lips, and has a swig. He can't even pronounce what it's supposed to be, but it's dry and sweet and pearls into little bubbles when it reacts with his tongue. A complementary bottle came with the room, and they ordered another after working up a thirst on the bed, and then another with those itty bitty little steaks after screwing around in the tub, and he thinks this might be a fourth, given a hazy memory of Yondu answering the door naked.

Yondu kicks him in the head. "Pass that on up here."

Kraglin rolls over with a groan. The porno channel they were streaming is still on, muted, flashing an orgy all over the wall. Holding the bottle carefully, he crawls a few feet on his elbows. His dick is sore, wrung out and still sticky with drying jizz and lube. He might be getting too old for three times in one day. Night. Whatever.

He offers the bottle to Yondu, who guzzles down the last of it. 

"Hey," Kraglin says, a thought rolling around heavily between his ears.

Yondu gives the bottle a shake, looking for the last drops, then flings the thing across the room. It lands with a shattering crash. Breakable glass—that's how you know it's the good stuff. 

"Hey," he says again.

Yondu scratches his belly. "What?"

Kraglin tries to remember what he was going to say. He frowns. Then he looks up and it comes back to him.

"I used to live here."

"That so?" Yondu says. "Thought this shithole planet looked familiar."

Kraglin means to say something else, but he gets distracted eyeing up Yondu, who's always a sight when he's pleased with himself. 

"What you got that stupid look on your face for, boy?"

He shrugs. It's an unfair question, in his opinion, on account of how he can't even feel his face. It's supposed to be a serious face, because he's looking at Yondu seriously.

"You got real pretty eyes," he says.

Yondu's lip curls, and he stares up at Kraglin with what looks like horror. Kraglin snorts, nearly laughing, and then he very sternly makes his mouth go straight because this is important.

"I mean it," he says earnestly. He gestures for emphasis and almost falls over. "You got the prettiest eyes. Like an angel's."

"Like a—you are one dumb bastard, you know that?" Yondu says, and he smacks Kraglin hard on the shoulder.

Kraglin only grins and snorts again, thinking tiltedly of red eyes in the dark. Warm arms. The ship waiting somewhere up in orbit, and that big sky going on forever. The room starts to spin.

"Yeah, I know," he says.

But just for the insult, he passes out face-first onto Yondu's chest and stays there drooling on him until security finally comes to kick them out.


End file.
